Super Secret details about the My Game Space program: details here
8.7 ultra recommended
Are you a precocious new freshman girl at an exclusive school for the study of the magic arts, in search of your lost Egyptian sister Irene? If so, this isn't the game for you. Go away. You'll be bored. But for everyone else, it's time to get excited because someone has finally done a "find the item" game correctly!
In Magic Academy, you are incoming freshman Annie. (Don't go to Abra Academy by mistake! It's nowhere near as nice a school.) Last year, your older sister Irene enrolled in Magic Academy. In less than a semester, she made some friends, hassled a lot of professors, learned a few spells ... and promptly vanished. Not like a magician - more like a missing person. The police didn't investigate because the school campus is a giant castle rumored to be haunted. And the teachers are too busy being eccentric to really care. It was all very mysterious. Now it's up to you to figure out what happened to your sister and if possible, rescue her!
Like NevoSoft's previous game, Mysteryville, this is a "find the item" game that actually makes sense. What that means is that finding lots of random items inside of cluttered rooms actually advances the story. NevoSoft are geniuses and real pioneers to have taken this radical approach.
For example, you want school librarian Professor Lua's help in researching your sister's activities, but he's a bit distracted when it comes to helping new students because (a) he's befuddled and (b) his library is infested with mice! You can't give him a brain transplant (unless there's a cheat code I missed), but you can at least remove all the rodents from the book shelves. Just click on them and they'll shimmer and fly offscreen, just like in real life when your hamster gets out of his cage and you click on him. In other levels you might be asked to collect all the test tubes and beakers from a room, or all the spiders. Some are easy to find and some are difficult. Some are difficult times five.
Of course you'll be given the standard list of specific random objects to find, too. Unlike other games of this type, you're not given an entire list of items all at once... just groups of three, four, or five at a time. This actually works well because large lists of items are a bit daunting and promote random clicking. And if it's one thing the creators of these kinds of games despise, it's random clicking! The items you are asked to find are sometimes given to you as words (AKA text), and sometimes as white outlines (AKA reverse silhouettes). Part of the fun of "find the item" games is trying to figure out what the authors mean by "sand glass." (They mean an hourglass. What, are they 14th Century Italians? Come on, NevoSoft.) Or why when I have to find a "mouse" in Irene's dorm room and I click on a mouse... I get a wrong answer buzzer. (Turns out they want me to click on the floppy camouflaged stuffed mouse doll on the bed, not the enormous real pet mouse sitting on the chair right in the middle of the room.) Wait, did I say these misunderstandings were part of the fun? I meant that they aren't. Thankfully, problems like these only pop up now and again at the academy. By the way, white outline clues are the hardest to deal with. Sometimes the outline is much larger - or much smaller - than the actual object, and at a different angle than the item appears in the room. Oval-shaped items are particularly tricky... and just wait until you go object-hunting in the dark.
By far the most interesting type of puzzle you'll face at the Magic Academy is spotting the differences between two rooms. You'll be shown two nearly identical rooms side by side. The challenge is to click on objects that are in one version of the room but missing in another, or vice versa. Make sure your eyeglasses or contacts prescription is up to date! And remember not to stare at your computer screen too long, or a yappy little dog will run up behind you and jump on your back. Hints are available, but after you use one you have to wait for a hint timer to count down before you can ask for another.
There are also various other puzzles and minigames in Magic Academy, usually involving rearranging or rotating puzzle pieces to form a picture. Theses are smooth and work well with the game's story, but are nothing special.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is a great, atmospheric, slightly creepy movie about some students who disappear while on a picnic at Hanging Rock, Australia.
The art of Magic Academy is well done, though there are occasional inconsistencies in the graphics. For example, the professors and characters you meet (like Irene's friend Melamori, who reminds me of the main character in the Harry Potter series... can't quite remember his name right now) don't exactly match the art style of the rooms and objects. Perhaps a more cartoonish style would suit the game's characters better. Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst is still the reigning champion of "find the item" games, though Magic Academy definitely has a much more interesting plot and radical gameplay that goes hand in hand with the story. Happily, unlike some cheaper games of this type, the objects don't appear to be just floating in midair.
Whoever did the music is no Goblin, but the tunes are cinematic and a nice fit to the game's atmosphere. A few more songs to loop in the background while hunting for spiders and apples and hats would have been welcome.
One minor annoyance is that after having a conversation in a cluttered room with a tutor or another character and the level starts, the enchanted parchment panel displaying the items you must find obscures part of the room. Naturally the authors didn't hide anything behind the panel, but it takes quite a few levels to get used to that.
Like a note that reads "Meet me at midnight under the old oak tree," the case of Ilene the missing Egyptian sister is very, very mysterious. Magic Academy is a fun school to attend. If you need to study for an upcoming eye exam, you may have just found the perfect game. Try the demo - you won't be disappointed.